American Journal of Engineering Research (AJER)

2015

American Journal of Engineering Research (AJER)

e-ISSN : 2320-0847 p-ISSN : 2320-0936
Volume-4, Issue-1, pp-143-149
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Open Access

Research Paper

Improved RSA cryptosystem based on the study of number

theory and public key cryptosystems
Israt Jahan, Mohammad Asif, Liton Jude Rozario
Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh

ABSTRACT: Security is required to transmit confidential information over the network. Security is also
demanding in wide range of applications. Cryptographic algorithms play a vital role in providing the data
security against malicious attacks. RSA algorithm is extensively used in the popular implementations of Public
Key Infrastructures. In asymmetric key cryptography, also called Public Key cryptography, two different keys
(which form a key pair) are used. One key is used for encryption and only the other corresponding key must be
used for decryption. No other key can decrypt the message not even the original (i.e. the first) key used for
encryption. In this paper, we have proposed an improved approach of RSA algorithm using two public key pairs
and using some mathematical logic rather than sending one public key d irectly.Because if an attacker has an
opportunity of getting the public key componet they can find private key value by brute force search.
General Terms: Cryptography, network security
KEYWORDS: IRSA, RSA, security, cryptography

I.

INTRODUCTION

Number theory may be one of the purest branches of mathematics, but it has turned out to be one of
the most useful when it comes to computer security. Sensitive data exchanged between a user and a Web site
needs to be encrypted to prevent it from being disclosed to or modified by unauthorized parties. The encryption
must be done in such a way that decryption is only possible with knowledge of a secret decryption key. The
decryption key should only be known by authorized parties.
In traditional cryptography, such as was available prior to the 1970s, the encryption and decryption
operations are performed with the same key. This means that the party encrypting the data and the party
decrypting it need to share the same decryption key. Establishing a shared key between the parties is an
interesting challenge. If two parties already share a secret key, they could easily distribute new keys to each
other by encrypting them with prior keys. But if they dont already share a secret key, how do they establish the
first one? This challenge is relevant to the protection of sensitive data on the Web and many other applications
like it. This line of thinking in pre-Web terminology prompted two Stanford University researchers,
Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, to write a landmark paper, New Directions in Cryptography in 1976 [6].
The paper suggested that perhaps encryption and decryption could be done with a pair of different keys rather
than with the same key. The decryption key would still have to be kept secret, but the encryption key could be
made public without compromising the security of the decryption key. This concept was called public-key
cryptography because of the fact that the encryption key could be made known to anyone.
The full public-key method would come a year later as an application of another famous problem,
integer factorization[11].

II.
RSA CRYPTOSYSTEM
The Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) cryptosystem is one of the best known public key cryptosystems
for key exchange or digital signatures or encryption of blocks of data. RSA uses a variable size encryption block
and a variable size key. The key-pair is derived from a very large number, n, that is the product of two prime
numbers chosen according to special rules; these primes may be 100 or more digits in length each, yielding an n
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with roughly twice as many digits as the prime factors.

The public key information includes n and a derivative of one of the factors of n; an attacker cannot
determine the prime factors of n (and, therefore, the private key) from this information alone and that is what
makes the RSA algorithm so secure.

2.1 RSA Key Generation Algorithm:

1. Generate two large random primes, p and q, of approximately equal size such that their product n = pq is of
the required bit length, e.g. 1024 bits.
2. Compute n = pq and () phi = (p-1)(q-1).
3. Choose an integer e, 1 < e < phi, such that gcd(e, phi) = 1.
4. Compute the secret exponent d, 1 < d < phi, such that ed 1 (mod phi).
5. The public key is (n, e) and the private key is (n, d). Keep all the values d, p, q and phi secret.
n is known as the modulus.
e is known as the public exponent or encryption exponent or just the exponent.
d is known as the secret exponent or decryption exponent.
2.2 Encryption Algorithm
Sender A does the following:1. Obtains the recipient B's public key (n, e).
2. Represents the plaintext message as a positive integer m
3. Computes the cipher text c = me mod n.
4. Sends the cipher text c to B.
2.3 Decryption Algorithm
Recipient B does the following:1. Uses his private key (n, d) to compute m = c d mod n.
2. Extracts the plaintext from the message representative m.

III.
NUMBER THEORY BEHIND RSA:
III.1 Prime Generation and Integer Factorization
Two basic facts and one conjecture in number theory prepare the way for todays RSA public-key cryptosystem.
FACT 1. Prime generation is easy: Its easy to find a random prime number of a given size.
This is a result of two other points: Prime numbers of any size are very common, and its easy to test whether a
number is a prime even a large prime.
According to the Prime Number Theorem, the expected number of candidates to test will be on the order of ln x
(the natural logarithm of x) where x is a typical number of the intended size.
Large in the cryptographic context typically means 512 bits (155 decimal digits) or more.
FACT 2. Multiplication is easy: Given p and q, its easy to find their product, n = pq.
There are many efficient ways to multiply two large numbers.
CONJECTURE 3. Factoring is hard: Given such an n, it appears to be quite hard to recover the prime factors p
and q.
Despite hundreds of years of study of the problem, finding the factors of a large number still takes a long time in
general. The fastest current methods are much faster than the simple approach of trying all possible factors one
at a time. (Such a method would take on the order of n steps.) However, they are still expensive. For instance, it
has been estimated recently that recovering the prime factors of a 1024-bit number would take a year on a
machine costing US $10 million. A 2048-bit number would require several billion times more work. [11]
III.2 Modular Exponentiation and Roots
Given this background, n will hereafter denote the product of two large, randomly generated primes.
Let m and c be integers between 0 and n-1, and let e be an odd integer between 3 and n-1 that is relatively prime

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to p-1 and q-1, meaning the following equation has to be satisfied:

gcd(e,(p-1).(q-1))=1
The encryption and decryption operations in the RSA public-key cryptosystem are based on two more facts and
one more conjecture:
FACT 4.Modular exponentiation is easy: Given n, m, and e, its easy to compute c = me mod n.
The value me mod n is formally the result of multiplying e copies of m, dividing by n, and keeping the
remainder. This may seem to be an expensive computation, involving e-1 multiplications by m with increasingly
large intermediate results, followed by a division by n. However, two optimizations make the operation easy:
1. Multiplying by an appropriate sequence of previous intermediate values, rather than only by m, can
reduce the number of multiplications to no more than twice the size of e in binary.
2. Dividing and taking the remainder after each multiplication keeps the intermediate results the same
size as n [2].
FACT 5. Modular root extraction the reverse of modular exponentiation is easy given the prime
factors: Given n, e, c, and the prime factors p and q, its easy to recover the value m such that c = me mod n.
The value m can be recovered from c by a modular exponentiation operation with another odd integer d between
3 and n-1. In particular, for this d, the following holds for all m:
m = (me)d mod n .
This integer d is easy to compute given e, p, and q.
CONJECTURE 6. Modular root extraction is otherwise hard: Given only n, e, and c, but not the prime
factors, it appears to be quite hard to recover the value m.
We will want to compute d from e, p and q , where d is the multiplicative inverse of d. It means
e.d=1(mod (n))

IV.
PROPOSED IRSA(IMPROVED RSA)ALGORITHM
RSA is a block cipher in which the plaintext and cipher text are integers between 0 and n- 1 for some n.
Encryption and decryption are of the following form, for some plaintext block M and cipher text block C:
C = My/xmod n
M = Cdmod n = (My/x)dmod n.
Both sender and receiver must know the values of n, y and x only the receiver knows the value of d.
IV.1 Process of Encryption and Decryption:
This is a public key encryption algorithm with a public key of KU = {y,n},{x} and a private key of KR = {d,n}.
For this algorithm to be satisfactory for public-key encryption, the following requirements must be met:
1. It is possible to find values of y, x, d, n such that (My/x) d= M mod n for all M<n.
2. It is relatively easy to calculate My/x and Cd for all values of M <n.
3. y is a multiple of x and e (which the public key in the normal RSA algorithm )

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figure1 : process of IRSA algorithm

IV.2 Computational Steps:
Begin by selecting two prime numbers, p and q, and calculating their product n, which is the modulus for
encryption and decryption.
Next, we need the quantity (n) referred to as the Euler totient of n, which is the number of positive integers
less than n and relatively prime to n.
Then select an integer e that is relatively prime to (n) (i.e., the greatest common divisor of e and (n) is 1).
Select two numbers x and y such that y=xe
Using this numbers formulate two public key {y,n},{x}
Finally, calculate d as the multiplicative inverse of e (which is public key in normal RSA), modulo (n).
Suppose that user A has published its public key and that user B wishes to send the message M to A.
Then B calculates C = My/x(mod n) and transmits C.

V.
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
In order to justify the performance we used different modulus length(256 bits, 512 bits,1024 bits)
and the block sizes (128 bits,256 bits,512 bits,1024 bits). The two following table shows the experimental
results of RSA and IRSA respectively.
bitlength(n)

256
512
1024

TABLE 1: Table of experimental result on RSA

blocksize in
key generation(x) Encryption
Decryption
bits
MS
time(y)
time(z)
MS
MS
128
50
59
360
256
175
88
909
512
600
123
2710

Total time
t=x+y+z
MS
469
1172
3433

TABLE 2: Table of experimental result on IRSA

bit length(n)

blocksize in
bits

key generation(x)
MS

256
512
1024

128
256
512

63
187
612

Encryption
time(y)
MS
67
97
133

Decryption
time(z)
MS
368
918
2728

Total time
t=x+y+z
MS
498
1202
3473

The key genaration time comparison of RSA and IRSA is below

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figure 2: Key generation time comparison of RSA and IRSA in ms

From the above figure it is clear that the key generation time in IRSA is greater than RSA key generation time as
IRSA requires additional x and y to be generated.

figure 3: Encryption time of RSA and IRSA

The above figure shows the encryption time of RSA and IRSA. As it is seen from the figure that IRSA takes
more time than RSA to encrypt(in mili second),but the difference is very few.
The following figure shows the decryption time of RSA and IRSA and it is also of similar behaviour
like figure 5.2, that is decryption time of IRSA is more than RSA.

figure 4: Decryption time of RSA and IRSA

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The total time comparison(including key generation,encryption and decryption)of RSA and IRSA is below:

figure 5: Total time comparison of RSA and IRSA in ms (key generation+encryption+decryption)

The overall comparison between RSA and IRSA can be better seen from the following pi chart.

figure 6: pi-chart of overall comparison between RSA and IRSA

The table below shows the comparison between RSA and IRSA
TABLE 3: Table of comparison between RSA and IRSA
RSA
IRSA
Use only one public key
Use two public key
Less communication overload

High communication overload

More vulnerable to brute force attack

Less vulnerable to brute force attack

Less secure

More secure

The Public key is sent once

The Public key is sent separately twice

VI.
CONCLUSION
This research is a study of number theory and pulic key cryptosystems and based on this improving the
RSA cryptosystem that is more reliable to brute force attack.RSA cryptosystem produces one public key to
encrypt the message. Though it is hard to find out the factors of n and get p and q, two large prime numbers,
therefore brute force attack is more difficult in our proposed algorithm as the encryption keys are sent separtely,
not at once. The proposed RSA is used for system that needs high security but with less speed.
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